Lots of blood and pain. Yup. But, getting my tattoo re-done and expanded was fun, all in all. I really like this relatively new place - if you're in Tucson, Arizona, check out Metro Tattoo, they've got some great artists, who are nice and personable to boot (and/or bloody crazy), and a lovely piercer who seems quite knowledgeable. Personally, I was even attracted to the decor of the place - instead of tacky flash everywhere and glaring lights, the walls are in various shades of red, with prints of dark angels and fae tastefully spread about, plants, and leather couches. It's like a comfy, stylish lounge.

So...the inking itself. A lot of similes come to mind, involving feelings of scalpels or needles, but I think the most painful aspect is actually the vibration, of all things. That, and when it gets near or over bone (the vibrations transmit down your skeleton a ways) and the fun pain-tingles near the spine. All that said, it's certainly an ordeal, but not an unmanageable one; I recognize that what I have is relatively large, but moreover it's the amount of outlining and color put into it, so it's not quite a sleeve but it was certainly a bit more time and work than the average tattoo.

I think I shifted all the way through whatever repertoire I have of meditation/pain management stuff over the course of the given hours, but two points stuck as working well - the not very meditative, 'pfft, this ain't nothing next to emotion-pain/heartbreak,' and the more effective, 'pain is only assigned a bad connotation by reflex, it's just another sensation and isn't intrinsically good or bad, but just is.' I think I did okay, got a compliment or two on stillness, and the people in the shop thought I was bored or falling asleep at a few points.

Actually, it was quite relaxing, in truth. Lots of endorphins probably helped, though the adrenal rush left me starving. I had a flash of thought at one point, that maybe in some ways people who cut themselves unconsciously use the pain to approach a meditative state, which in a sense is healthy but the route to it isn't quite. I'm not sure how to explain that thought further but am glad of the insight, or better understanding or what, if there's any verity to it.

Also, I had already thought Alice Cooper was a pretty rocking guy (business and music-wise), but his radio show (which was playing in the shop) is awesome - great songs, witty commentary, even his voice is pleasantly resonant. I'm glad I finally got to hear it after reading good ol' Metallica Bryan's review of it who knows how long ago.

Quick quotes -
"It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water." (just because I love language tricks like that)
---
"To be like Christ is to be a Christian." - I think Christianity would feel more accessible to me if it focused on something simple and concise like that, rather than allowing itself to fall into fundamentalist or ritualistic traps. That, and I think many a Christian over the centuries has forgotten that little tenet. But hey, who am I to judge?

I read an interesting thought last night; basically, that hearing is the only sense that we don't have to try harder to use - where you can adjust the muscles around your eye to focus better, you can't try harder to hear something. Instead, as the ears are passive sensory organs, you have to quiet your thoughts or move your attention away from your other sensory input to pay more attention to what is there regardless of what effort you make.

So, granted, you can try harder to see something with your eyes, and in a different sense you have to reach out to physically touch something, so I could see that argument. Ok, and yeah, you can physically sniff more to smell something better, and put something in your mouth to taste it. What about the subtler senses, though, like our sense of space or objects-in-space, or our sense of what's happening internally in our bodies (there's a medical term for that, I'll find it)? Are those passive and requiring of attention rather than effort (there's my vote), or are they more active senses?

      More randomness! Today, while stalking the wild and crazy bonsai tree in the Santa Rita mountains, I got to see an oddity. That is, just over a ridge was this sudden area of white. Apparently, amidst all the high-desert scrub of juniper in red-brown dirt and clay, (we learned this from a geologist) a bit of a different kind of material welled up from the ground at some point in the distant past, and kind of...well, popped or something. And voila - white clay! Which isn't horribly notable except for being a bit creepy in a hidden vale kind of way, but: there are these really twisted, stunted, strangely trunk'ed, and ancient trees growing in the little gullies and crags. It's just odd, as these are the kind of trees that really only grow in California, and there aren't any super-old (talking hundreds and even up to thousand year old trees, here) anywhere nearby. Just in the white clay. Yep. Weird.

      Also, the last full moon was fun, though I forgot to write about it till now. I went out for one of those getting-home-really-late walks, and after a bit realized the clouds were moving at a relatively break-neck speed. What was particularly interesting about this was that the moon was so bright that as the clouds moved past it, a kind of bright-dim-bright effect that you'd normally only see during the day with the sun was happening, which made for an odd very-dark-version-of-daytime feeling. Also, I noticed that the city lights were reflecting off the clouds to the south in a lovely rosy-orange way, and then I noticed that the clouds were moving along in this stately parade or river or basically in a a certain line across the sky. They didn't fill up the entirety of the dark, but were instead all travelling along the same current, and in that wind-current were moving fast and low enough that I could even watch the vapors change shape and form as they passe the moon. Good times.

Random Question of the Day - how did ancient people figure out which herbs and plants had medicinal properties? Did they just walk around trying stuff, or perhaps more intelligently foist them off on people they didn't like, maybe?

15 Hours, by Mitchel Scanlon. Ahh, beer and pretzel science fiction. It occurs to me that I should perhaps assign a particular beer to the book; alas, I'm drawing a blank at the moment, for this one. For the future, then. Anyhoo, compared to the likes of authors that normally write within the 40k shared setting, such as Dan Abnett, this novel isn't that great. It's not bad, it's certainly very short at any rate, so...it's okay. Okay is a good word for it.

A few things did pique my interest about it. One, it seemed a uniquely 'American' 40k story; I couldn't tell you why, perhaps something with starting in a kind of Midwest farm analogue, but I had forgotten how, well, 'British' most 40k stories are. Two, the chapter headers, which were quite funny in a very dry way. And three, the narration dips into these introspective moments, which form an interesting progression of the main character coming to terms with his situation, and as such (however sacrilegious this may sound to 40k fans) took on a yogic bent. And that, if I'm right about it, would be deeply ironic, and a credit to the author for slipping it in there.

Creepy fish - we'll go with another triad of comments: one, I would not want sashimi made of such, though I do very much like sashimi. Two, I find it cool that there is an "Underwater Times." Three, I am a bit disappointed they do not have a Page 3 Mermaids section. Sadness.

Random Unexpectedly Freudian Quote of the Day: "...our ego-feeling is only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive, indeed an all-embracing, feeling which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world around it." As that could just as easily come out of a meditation text, I long for the days back in lit. theory where we had someone fluent in German to check the standard 1950's WASPy translations.

I'm running on about an hour's worth of sleep, so I don't really remember what I had wanted to write about today. Why am I so hungry, though? I had Denny's at....three in the morning, that should have held me other I'd think. Hm. Also, that old cliche about 'Think about baseball' in awkward situations? It actually worked in the clinch of the moment. Somehow it seems funny to consider that folk wisdom of a sort, but hey.

Anyway, I did remember one thing; on a random show about body modification (split tongues, tats, hanging from hooks, etc) I was listening to while working out (I just realized a slight irony there), there was an interesting contrast made. That is, that plastic surgery is often much more invasive or extensive than what people would usually consider 'extreme' body modification, and yet it is almost entirely directed towards being invisible. The best plastic surgery (barring ginormous stripper boobs) should theoretically be nigh impossible to even tell it was done; and in the same token, it's for blending in, usually, not standing out.

Obliquely, yesterday I met a woman who had the web between her upper lip and her gums pierced. Hm. Not much to say about that, except that it actually wasn't that bad looking. Oh: other random trivia - smoking a pipe is a lot easier to conceal from night vision than a cigarette. There was more random trivia from the soldiers just back from Korea, but honestly I got kind of lost in the deluge of acronyms as early in the morning as I heard it, so don't recall much unfortunately.

Random thoughts, haven’t done that in a while. One, I’d kind of noted this before, but not so consistently as lately – I had listened to a Buddhist meditation cd I’d gotten as a Christmas gift, and one little line in it said something about relaxing muscles you didn’t even realize were tense. So that got me thinking. And over a couple days, I realized my tongue is often tensed up against my palate, my lower abdominals pull my torso downwards, and even as I’m walking or driving, my toes and feet tend to curl and tense a little.

It’s a funny kind of tenseness that has obviously become unconscious habit, for each time I relax my belly and stand up straighter or relax my feet and feel my ankles loosen, I’m guessing about two seconds later they’re tense again. So, I suppose this is going to take a good amount more conscious effort on my part, especially in consistency, and all the same makes me wonder what the hell else I’m tensing without realizing it.

The other thing that clicked for me recently was a possible similarity between aikido and yoga. In each, an ideal aspect is looking for that physical-mental space where no effort is being expended to complete the task at hand. For aikido, in purely ideal sense that would make it the ultimate martial art, in terms of Bruce Lee’s respected adage that maximum efficiency is one of the highest goals in fighting. But for both, the trick is that (at least to learn the skill) it takes effort in a sense to put your body-mind in a position where it doesn’t need to expend effort, and then once that’s accomplished to keep from trying to expend energy anyway out of habit.

So I could perhaps see aikido as a way of learning to interact with other people on a subtle level, just as in yoga you learn to interact with yourself in a similar way, like when you hold onto negative emotions in the same way you’d hold a negative pose – learning to be relaxed and open even with pain (and, to loop around, perhaps being the uke in aikido acts in a similar role, in learning to take pain dispensed by another).

Kôhî jikô (Café Lumière), with Yo Hitoto and Tadanobu Asano. I randomly picked this up because I liked the title, and was pleasantly surprised. I should note, however, that this probably isn't a film that should be watched if you're tired (I was exhausted at the time). It's...well, super-relaxing,, like a lullaby, or maybe meditative would be a better word. The movie as a whole is almost silent, and very still in terms of motion - the camera barely moves for each scene, giving you ample time to practically study what's in the frame, and sometimes you have to, as the main character might just be another face in the background crowd. The dialogue is very spare, and very every-day in nature; I think where I'm going with all this is that I'd like to find articles or something about this movie, as I feel like I caught everything that was said and not said, and yet at the same time wouldn't be surprised if I'd missed out on a huge amount of content.

Underworld: Evolution, with Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman. And Beckinsale's butt. Mmmhmm. Anyhoo, I thought this was quite an improvement over the original, which had disappointed me (on account of having little action for a vampire-vs-werewolf story, ripping off White Wolf's World of Darkness, and not going far past the shallow). This sequel, in contrast, hugely upgraded the action and amount of it, and took the backstory in a direction that was no longer so ripped off (if kind of unexplained). I suppose I'd say the improvements in story and character are dependent upon having the introduction that the first movie was...come to think of it, I suppose that's how I'd think of the original, as an introduction. Evolution doesn't exactly conclude a lot, but it did at least expand the setting and story further, which was fun; I suppose I've been spoiled by preferring the expansiveness of the World of Darkness shared setting, so in remembering that, I thought Evolution performed nicely in what it did.

Random Quote of the Day - kind of a generalization, but I think it kind of captures the spirit of the thing:
"The medieval university looked backwards; it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge. The modern university looks forward, and is a factory of new knowledge."

The Transporter 2, with Jason Statham. I expect I'll go see any movie with Statham in a fighting role, if for no other reason than since the first Transporter I was so completely surprised to find out he is such a skilled martial artist. That said, I think this was a fun movie; it seemed to me that they took every scene and said, "How can we make this so completely over the top it becomes hilarious?" And damn it, they pulled it off - I could not stop laughing. I think it's good that they definitely were not taking themselves seriously in making this film, as it really isn't anything more than Statham playing up the eponymous character and some relatively original choreography, and they didn't stumble in trying to overreach that like martial arts films often do. Oh, and they poke at the French, in not too mean of a way, that was kind of fun.

Also, two random things I've heard about Tucson and the Southwest lately - one, apparently prickly pear pads and...pears, hm, that was bad syntax. Anyway, that cactus and its fruit are great for helping with diabetes and high cholesterol; they're not really sure why, yet, but think it has something to do with the gums or fibers in cactus that aren't normally found in other plants.

The other thing is just that I heard Tucson compared to Alaskan cities, which seemed odd at first to me, but as the woman with the luscious voice being interviewed on the radio described, Tucson is technically a big city, but it has an inescapably small-town feel, which I think is quite true. Especially when you delve into the more community-aspects of it (bars/coffee shops/local music scene, hell, even dojos, etc), rather than, say, just staying within a university or single-area bubble (like just staying in the more relatively posh Foothills). Though...I suppose even the university turns out kind of like a college-town feel in that area of town, in the end.

Must Love Dogs, with John Cusack and Diane Lane. I think this movie didn't do amazingly well in the theatres for a few reasons - it's centered on relatively older people than the norm for romantic comedies, with correspondingly different priorities and a different kind of romance, it's a little slow and meandering, and it's for the most part down to earth. As such, however, I really enjoyed it. As per the usual for a movie with Cusack in it, I thought the dialogue was witty and the humor quirky, and all with a general understated class.

On a personal level, the story was quite cathartic for me, as I identified with three of the main characters in a way that felt uncanny - like, I wouldn't have been surprised if the credits had ended with, "Frank, this is your life." In the same token, I'm sure most people coming off heartbreak after a long relationship would feel the same, but I think that speaks to the relevance and quality of the characterization and story than anything else. On a more facetious personal level, that so much of the movie had to do with rowing felt horribly, darkly ironic, but I suppose that's funny in a way.

Addendum to that previous post on depression (or, a realization I had later on). I think up till this most recent bout, one of my main issues with approaching my depression was trying to address it alone. Now, what I mean by that I think takes a bit of explanation. Every previous time I'd been depressed, and well into the recent bout, I'd denied it - whether by denying the fact that I was, or realizing I was depressed but railing against it and wishing I wasn't, for any number of reasons, but perhaps most of all because I felt it made me less of a person. But no, it doesn't - I'm me, and anyone who runs into that trouble is just who they are; we're aren't 'depressed,' we are who we are, and we happen to have to deal with that condition on our selves sometimes. Who knows, maybe we're the better for it in the end, or maybe we can choose to be.

To make a shallow loop, in realizing I was depressed I'd finally reached out for...well, rescue would I think be the best word. And completely faceplanted, hard, when it turned out I had been complacent in having faith in that supposed salvation, and the hand I thought was pulling me up just...let go, all of a sudden. In that, I'm not sure whether I'll trust like that again, and leave myself so vulnerable, but truth be told I shouldn't have been relying on another so much anyway; so in that sense, it seems better to address my depression alone.

But - not alone. I had been alone in addressing it before in denying it - once I stopped denying it and started to try to accept and even embrace it like I did with my headaches, then I wasn't alone anymore - finally, after all that conscious and unconscious struggling with it, all that turning my back on myself, I was helping myself. So...not so alone.

Time of the Twins, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. First, thanks to Bryce in receiving for randomly giving me this out of nowhere - can't beat a random well-intentioned gift. Unfortunately, the novel didn't turn out so well. The first in a trilogy following the original Dragonlance epic, I think I'd call this Dragonlance-lite. There are less characters, less complexity of plot, even just less happening at all. I almost felt like I wanted the whole thing to be a novella instead of the length it was, especially for the way the potential of plumbing the depths of the relationship between the twins in question was shied away from.

And, they kept the damn kender in there; I remember in the original trilogy he was mildly annoying, but served his purpose and even developed a solid amount of depth near the end. And I suppose the concept of the kender in their fearlessness and other odd qualities was interesting way back when, when I was so absorbed in that original story. But this time around, with so much of the novel from his point of view and reliant upon him...oh, I could barely stand it. On this reason: one of the qualities previously referred to is that these little buggers have no concept of personal property, which is fine, makes for amusing situations and innocent looks ha ha and all that.

But, in that they also have no concept of the word consequence, and no idea that their actions might affect or hurt other people, and on top of all that can rationalize like motherfuckers. And half the novel was from this thing's point of view...yeah, I suppose me having trouble with what should, I suppose, otherwise be amusing might seem odd to most people, but I think others will understand.

If you know me, you know I get headaches. Or, at least, I used to anyway. Now they are uncommon enough that I've begun to wonder whether they're just a slightly amped version of the kind of headaches that people normally get. I used to hate my head. The constant and random aches were oppressive, like those experiments where the dog just gives in to despair because it is randomly electrocuted and has no way of predicting when it will happen. I completely adored those who could relieve it, whether by a cool hand on the cheek or otherwise.

But then, there was a certain point where I think I just began to consciously accept the aches. I knew that sometime every morning I'd get slammed and have to rage against myself to keep my eyes open against the painful light of even a darkened room, otherwise I'd get in trouble for 'falling asleep' at work. I knew as I wrote papers late into the night that the leaden weight that my skull had become wasn't going to get any lighter...and I actually started smiling at it at some point. When it felt like a spike had been driven into my temple out of nowhere and made me toss my head, I'd let it have its moment, and when it passed I'd laugh it off. Just another ache. Somehow, some way I had come around to appreciating them, in a twisted way. They'd taught me how to deal with pain, with unwillingly shifted emotion, to work under pressure (literally, in a sense).

But, something I've never admitted till recently, because, frankly, I was ashamed, was how closely bouts of depression were tied into those aches. For the longest time I held an intense scorn for myself - where do I come off claiming 'depression' after what I'd seen at the hospital? I told myself to stop being an idiot and not to bitch about moping around. But, with clearer 'vision' lately, I can see how my aches combined with that dark water inside me, that murk that would well up in my consciousness and leave me lying in bed, staring at the ceiling for hours, or clutching myself in the middle of a crowd with tears in my eyes. Though my mentions of this thought have been almost universally rebuffed - I'm an upstanding young man with nothing to complain about, after all, how could I possibly be depressed, and if I am, get over it, it can't be that bad, and all that jazz - I'm past the point of caring.

I've finally come to start accepting it, just as I came to accept my aches; hell, the depression is a lot like the aches - sometimes with stimulus readily apparent, sometimes not, arriving against my will, and not leaving despite my will. An interesting aspect of it that I had not realized is that depression isn't an emotion - rather, it is something that affects emotion, and that seems a somewhat profound thing. Anyway, part of my accepting is just huge changes in personality, not in an overt way, but more subtle - a veil over my eyes falling away, it feels like. Part of it is meditative practice - at my first depression when I was younger, I'd sit and stare at the city lights for long periods of time, and just try to stop thinking. A later time, I began to slow my breathing to as close to stillness as possible as the rain fell on my skin, and began to find relief...but then lost the practice when things 'got better again.'

This time, however, I've begun to research, to learn, to train...I'm trying to take those old unconscious impulses towards meditation, where I had no idea why I was doing it, little say what I was doing, and direct them with purpose and help this time, and I'm finally coming close to smiling at 'my old friend' depression, the same way I did at the headaches. As much as I feel some impulse to regret what brought on the depression or my old reactions to it, I don't, at heart; lessons learned, I suppose. So here's to the people in my life from now on - some part of me will always be in minor key, I feel, but I'll be all the brighter for you from now on, nonetheless.

I'm not sure it's the best, but it's a kind of clever blonde joke

Aaand some more random quotes:
"Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion."

-now, this one I don't mesh with entirely, but it's interesting:
"The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't."

Random Quote of the Day (found out of context, not sure why it's so snipey towards Homer):
"Tu Fu comes from a saner, older, more secular culture than Homer, and it is not a new discovery with thim that the gods, the abstractions, the forces of nature, are frivolous, lewd, vicious, quarrelsome, and cruel, and only men's steadfastness, love, magnanimity, calmness, and compassion redeem the night-bound world."

Another bit from 'Threnody's Song.' I suppose I should explain a tiny bit, I think I've got a few different kinds of...sections that have developed in the course of daily writing; there are the 'scenes' I've already posted; notes on meditation texts I'm working through or advice given to me set in lyrical form; sections where I try to work out mental/emotional problems, in the same lyrical form; and then this kind, which I put in every couple of days or so. I hesitate to explain the goddess/Threnody/Karuna thing here, half because I suspect 9 out of 10 people would dismiss the thought as 'weird' before my first sentence was finished, and half because it's too personal, but if you're curious feel free to ask, I'll write or call you.

My goddess is dual on this bitter winter morn.
Threnody, striding forward in boots and leathers of jet,
her wings of smoke and ember'ed ash rippling behind,
and yet with a heart that is burning bright and light.
Karuna, graceful and softer in pale terra cotta and white,
warm and cool and calm, lost in her thoughts,
but with resolve apparent - a sword of heart's blood
and compassion's resonant song on her lips.

As Threnody stands watch, Karuna helps me up from where I kneel,
recovering from the blow to my heart's throat, delivered by the taker's dream.

We stand, back to back to back, in a Sardaukar's triangle.
We stand at the edge of an abyss, my maya.
I know I am afraid of what lurks in that darkness of imagination and denied reality.
I acknowledge that.
I stand on the edge, armed only with poem and will.
Karuna's chin resting over my shoulder, Threnody's hand in mine.
We are afraid. But fear and sadness have their time, and pass.
And we stand. Together.

*'Sardaukar's triangle' is a reference to a really specific scene in a novel, and has a whole wealth of connotations stemming from that phrase, which I probably shouldn't bore people with, and maya is...Sanskrit, I think, a concept kind of like the subconscious, but also quite distinct from that.

Casanova, with Heath Ledger and Sienna Miller. Firstly, as my date for the evening repeatedly gushed, "Heath Ledger is hot." I thought Miller was quite nice, as well, though I wonder whether that was mostly in redheaded-ness for this movie making her resemble Margeurite Moreau. I think it's mostly agreed about this movie that it's not exactly great, but it's....cute. It's definitely cute. It has a spot or two of swashbuckling (I'll note the clever/accurate choreography when Casanova wields a cane purely vertically near the end), a decent romance, and something of a twisty plot. There's humor throughout, generally of the kind where in laughing you almost want to put a hand to your mouth modestly, so that was fun. Having been an English major in a past life, though, I have to wonder whether it was intentional that Casanova should carry around a large, thick, penis. I mean cane. Carry around a thick cane with a metal bulge on one end.

Conflict: Desert Storm 2 - Back to Baghdad. I'd had a hankering since a long time ago to play one of these modern-set wargames, but as I rarely if I ever get to play videogames lately, this was a pleasant chance to try one out. And I deem it rocking. Not because of the action, ironically, which is kind of okay, I suppose...ish. But because of the teamwork; there is no playing against your buddy - there is only co-op. And if you know me and video games, you know I've always been a big proponent of co-op. Unfortunately, most games that do have that option have it as kind of an oddly crowded variant of just playing by yourself; this game, however, seemed designed for it. And though it's a very scripted game, in that it really did make us work together, and then even further work together in controlling multiple characters simultaneously within the game. There was teamwork everywhere, it was crazy. And having worked together to complete pleasantly stress-inducing goals, high-fives abound.

Another rambling upon how choosing one's words can be important, by me. Tadaa!

So, in a way I'll not and probably couldn't explain effectively, something was done last week that left me feeling quite angry, a little confused, and basically, very violated if nothing else. Tangentially, the funny part about it is that the person who did it not only probably didn't even realize the choice being made might do that (not that there was any expectation at all of caring), and even if they did in some way, I'm going to guess that it would be completely incomprehensible to them as to why. But, nothing to be done, there's no reason for me to call 'grievance!' and I'm really just trying to let it go, barring my initial reaction. Anyway, so I initially found out about the thing in question...I guess a couple days after the fact.

The person (Person A) that told me about it was a little apologetic...but only in that she had 'bad news' to tell me, as it were. I do appreciate her honesty in that regard, because...well, I very much appreciate frank honesty (had to get a pun in). But it was the way she went about telling me about it - it's hard to describe without details, but basically, praise was sung, rationalizations and explanations were made, and a general air of 'perfectly-normal-event' was described. And ironically, though the way those things were said was pretty much completely positive, those positive statements were describing an act of violation - and left me feeling like complete shit...very perplexed, complete shit, because I was torn between me being hurt/stabbed in the back, and hearing it described as a nice, pleasant thing. I've really no idea, but I'm going to guess that was out of obliviousness for how her words might affect me more than any conscious intent on her part, in that she really was just giving her honest thoughts about the situation.

Person B, a couple days later, responded to my evasive, one sentence description of the thing in question in a completely different way. She also gave me her honest opinion of it, but finally nailed the lid on the coffin of my second-guessing of myself by her evaluation of it being what it was (a very wrong thing to do) with a spot of logic to dispel my dubious look. Even better, though, and more importantly than anything else she said, she shifted my perspective back 'out' from the situation enough that it didn't matter that she was also angered and went on to point out the presence of the several friends of ours nearby who would agree with her - with her first sentence she made me think something like, 'wait - step back from it a little,' and that was a sweet relief from the weight of that abuse upon my shoulders. Her insightfulness in her choice of words was infinitely more pleasant to hear than the Person A's honesty, because while both were completely honest remarks upon the same thing, Person B's remarks were said with care for me/my feelings in mind.

The end.

I'm not sure I've ever gotten so 'SAD' as to count as having a disorder, but I just wanted to throw another random, possibly helpful to that one random person in Antarctica or something, article out there. Yay.


I think something similar happened with me, the dog, and a coyote once; there was much more apparent spilled trash, however, and less conversating and more staring down.

"Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness." - Rollo May

I read this and it struck a particularly painful chord in me, because of the way the first phrase is worded. So I wanted to note how a simple choice in wording something can affect a phrase so much (if it was, 'something is very important,' I wouldn't have hardly looked at it). And secondly I wanted to note that I thought that it seems a profound and yet easy thing to heal, to me, in that one can make the choice for something to matter to them or not, and generate compassion and have the benefits that that garners. I can watch a kid struggle to read a book, watching his face contort and his lips move as he tries to sound out each word, and choose for it not to matter to me - it doesn't matter to me, he ain't my kid - or I can choose to say, it does matter, and sit down and read with him, and encourage him, and choose that side of humanity to define myself.

A couple odes, in prose. Prodes, if you will. First, to Sensei Tony. Though I trudged my way to class, not looking forward to spending an hour and a half with eleven year olds, somehow he completely made it all ok by giving me a little confidence/emotion boost at the end of the night - not anything to do with martial arts at all, but just in general. Now that's a rocking teacher. I think regardless of what happens in the future and despite all the recent changes in this regard, I'd still like him to be the...uh, priest-figure I guess, I'm not sure of the term, for me and whomever I marry.

And for a completely different 'prode,' to Shane on The L Word. Yes, there are much 'prettier' actresses on the show, and perhaps more 'feminine,' but I think bar none the woman who plays Shane is the most attractive. She's a hundred times skinnier than I'm usually attracted to, though she does have a lovely low voice, and...well, she's practically androgynous in appearance. I don't know what it is, I think it might be her assuredness of personality and psyche - amongst all the other characters with their issues of identity and not being able to make up their minds or taking issue with other characters, Shane is like a rock in terms of those things, and the actress does a great job of extending that into her demeanor. And for whatever reason, that seems totally hawt, to trip and fall into a valley girl vernacular.

I can't really tell whether it applies to me, but maybe this Ayurvedic approach to headaches might work for someone else. Though I lean towards the cluster side of things, or, to borrow a term from sailing, being cluster-fucked, I've not quite been able to fit myself into a really pitta type.

Another bit from 'Threnody's Song'; it seems the parts that are easiest to take out are these descriptions of scenes, written mostly in my head as they occurred, I think because they are more directed outward than the inward rest.

"It was to be a sedate night; find a chanteuse, and coffee, ink and paper in hand.
Ghosts from the past were tempting, however, though I hardly seem to know them, now.
The painted guide was soon slumbering, in the middle of a crowd.
A false priestess and tall harlot held court, gesturing honey
and demanding tales of the past.
The host and dusky northerner held their silence close, however,
even as the once-angel in his wreathe of smoke and the jigsaw savant poured forth.
I fear I have become misaligned; though I knelt at the foot of a throne,
I was no courtier – only errant in a homeland become foreign,
all oaths I’d made broken ‘gainst my will. No fealty, no loyalty;
I feel one step out of phase.
I wondered, as we played at sticks in the lopsided court,
if I could find others, misaligned, what would we then be, together?"

I remembered something, reading "Tallulah" by Charles de Lint, which is kind of a commentary on the same; not some thing, really, but a state I was in for a very long while, where I was actually so happy as to have difficulty thinking of anything to write. Not so much that I couldn't think of anything, but it was just a different state of thinking, so I did write some things, if less frequently, but they were either love poetry, or of a more transcendental bent than what I've done lately. I'm not exactly sure where I was going with this, except maybe to reflect on my life in general being reflected my creative impulse, I suppose.

The Girl Next Door, with Elisha Cuthbert and Emile Hirsch. The DVD was pressed into my hands with the promise of eye-candy galore, so in my expectation to see another mindless comedy with random flashes of skin I was disappointed. I was, on the other hand, quite pleasantly surprised by what depth the story did have, and in its sweetness. To swing right back the other way, however, I couldn’t help but feel quite embittered by the story’s ‘if you give everything you can for your true love, it’ll all turn out ok’ message, though I suppose that’s just my perception-of-the-moment and is no mark on the movie; same goes for the uncannily-the-same-as personal sweet little romantic moments, though I suppose that’s a sign I should just stay away from romantic comedies for a while. As a completely obscure reference that ironically ties back into that last sentence a bit, this is the second movie I’ve seen that had used the Sneakerpimps on its soundtrack – 10 points.

Random quote of the day: “No one in this world views it the same...I believe that is what amazes me the most about it. Each person has his or her own vision of the world, and whatever lies outside that worldview becomes invisible. The rich ignore the poor. The happy can’t see those who are hurting.”

Secretary, with Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. First of all, I'd like to note that the tagline for this movie is fun: "Assume the position." At the same time I'd like to note, however, that while that inobstrusively clever line might make the film sound a bit like a comedy, it's really more a straight-up romance. A...kind of strange, ever so vaguely American Beauty kind of romance, anyway. I feel kind of hobbled in discussing it like I'd like to; in any case, I'm going to guess that most people would probably be too disturbed by the idea of bondage to get past being uncomfortable, but if you don't have an issue or can get past it, this is an oddly warming and quietly understated romance with great cinematography.

Later addendum: I thought it interesting that there was a posit in the story that basically defined the one character's submission to the other that basically paraphrased, if not quoted something out of a meditation book I was reading, just with a difference in who the sentence was referring to as subject. If anyone happens to see that movie, I'd like to talk about the part where she walks home alone for the first time, in that regard.

Random Quote of the Day: "Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas."

also, new photomagraphy

Since I've gotten some odd looks in regards to it before, random explanation time! In my family, when talking about our extended family, we often append names that describe what their general relationship is - 'Aunt Nuha,' for example, which I'm sure is pretty regular, but then also 'cousin Christina.' In some cases it's kind of logical, with an Aunt Abi and a cousin Abby, so I think that's where part of it stems from, but I think also is the crossing of generation-lines in our abundance of relatives. For example, Uncle Freddie's son is cousin Freddie, but cousin Freddie's daughter is cousin Tia - but at the same time, my mom talks about cousin Joann in Texas, who is her cousin, but not a cousin in the sense we call the other cousins cousin, but my granddad's brother is Uncle Nelson....hm. Now that I actually think about it, there really isn't any steady logic to it. So for some odd reason we add an extra sort of prefix to our relatives' names beyond what I've usually heard when people talk about their family. Yay! Probably mostly useless post!

Other random family observation, to no real purpose: I heard some statistics being bandied around the other day of how many people in the U.S. supposedly believe in some sort of god, how many attend church, and other related things. But, fifty percent of statistics are made up on the spot and all that. Anyway. It just made me reflect a little how my family, whom I do know better than statistics and feel I can make a somewhat more proper obvservation of, is generally 'spiritual,' I think, but in a quietly individualistic way. Not like, the entirely family attends church at once, per se, but there is various common experience with meditation or exploration into that kind of yoga or zen-ish spirituality and at the same time a common base of more mainstream-ish moralistic spirituality among us, even as we're all perhaps a bit more outwardly different from each other in whatever beliefs we have. Not that me making that observation really means anything in particular or is something to be analyzed in any way at all, but there it is.

The L Word has sparked my interest lately. Luckily, as about the only time I've really watched television recently has been super late at night after plopping on the couch, that's exactly when multiple episodes of it at a time are on. I'll freely admit that a large part of the reason for me not flipping the channel at first was quite base and probably ironically testosterone fueled. But, the show does have high production values and quality acting, and though it is basically a soap opera for all intents and purposes, but the nature of its setting which is populated almost exclusively by lesbians it approaches gender and feminism issues with some relish; I've not quite been able to divine enough about those issues as of yet to dive into actual animated discussion of them, but I find (and have found) observing the discussion and playing out thereof in this show (and some particularly odd experiences working at a hospital) to be quite interesting.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, with some limey kids. And Jesus, playing the lion. And Battle Santa! As was aptly described to me before I saw it, moments of awesome separated by interminable...not boredom, per se, but very extended slowness. The animation was wonderful, especially in the battle scenes, but the allegory was pretty hardcore heavy-handed, though (Wyatt said it isn't so much in the novel). I suppose in a sense some of it was a bit too directly for a kiddie audience, for my taste, or maybe rather too much so to hold my attention. Tangentially, however, I did find myself identifying with the oldest brother to a degree I haven’t in a long with any character in a long while, not so much in any particular detail as his general attitude in various situations, for whatever that was worth.